reply:voltage&van der graff

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1 total messages Started by Silvia Jona Sat, 03 Jun 1995 00:00

#102

Author: Silvia Jona
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 1995 00:00

30 lines
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Hi friends!
I'm a (very) recent subscriber to PHYSHARE from Italy. The first message
I
received arrived May 30.
I  belong to a similar Italian Physics teachers email club and it's
inter-
esting to see that similar topics are debated in different countries.
Phys-
ics (and physics loving, and physics teaching) are truely international!
I loved the conversation about the Van der Graaff. May I comment on
Larry's
analogy of electric versus gravitational fields and potentials.
I  think that showing the students 3-D graphs of the  electrostatic
poten-
tials  around a plane distribution of point charges is  very
illuminating.
The  equipotential lines are the analogies of geographical  contour
lines.
The  positive  charges  generate peaks and the  negative  charges
generate
wells.   The slopes of the peaks and wells get steeper and steeper  as
you
approach  the charges. If you label the contour lines with volts you get
a
nice quantitative idea of the shape and properties of the electric field.
Silvia
----------------------
Silvia Jona
MC5940@MCLINK.IT
----------------------

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